Chronic endurance exercise antagonizes the cardiac UCP2 and UCP3 protein up-regulation induced by nandrolone decanoate

BACKGROUND: Several lines of evidence revealed that chronic treatment of anabolic androgenic steroids (AASs) is accompanied with some cardiovascular side effects and in addition they also negatively mask the beneficial effects of exercise training on cardiac performance. METHODS: The present study examined whether the nandrolone decanoate (ND)-induced cardiac effects were mediated by changing the cardiac uncoupling protein 2 (UCP2) and 3 (UCP3) expression. Five groups of male wistar-albino rats including sedentary control (SC), sedentary vehicle (SV), sedentary nandrolone decanoate (SND), exercise control (EC), and exercise nandrolone decanoate (END) were used. ND was injected (10 mg/kg/week, intramuscular) to the animals in the SND and END groups and endurance exercise training was performed on a treadmill five times per week. RESULTS: The protein expressions of cardiac UCP2 and UCP3 have significantly increased in both the SND and EC groups compared to the SC ones. In contrast to UCP3, no significant differences were found between UCP2 protein expressions of the END and SC groups. Compared with the SND group, the exercise training significantly decreased the UCP2 and UCP3 protein expressions in the END group. CONCLUSIONS: The study has indicated that endurance exercise in combination with ND can result in that the exercise effectively antagonizes the effects of ND treatment on UCP2 and UCP3 up-regulation.